by Lexy Timms
Mel laughed at herself. Already losing out on a sex life because of the kids? Not even their kid. And they’d only just used the “L” word.
That sobered her.
He’d said it first. That was supposed to make a difference. All the romance novels, films, and teenagers said it mattered who said the “L” word first. It didn’t. Did it? He’d said love. Maybe it should be in capital letters: “LOVE.” But somehow, “love” fit better. A quiet, unassuming love between two adults. Love for grown-ups.
She’d said it, too. She caught her lower lip between her teeth and worried at it. She’d said she loved him. And she did. A few weeks in the jungle, a few nights in the local resort, months of internet chat and phone calls…
Love wasn’t the fire that so many expected. It wasn’t all-consuming flames that erupt into sex and then magically live happy forever after.
It was imagining life without him and failing. It was looking forward, thinking “us” and not “me.”
Mel sighed. As terrible as the reasons were, there was part of her that would be relieved when Maria was safely in the hospital—and not strictly for the girl’s sake. A very selfish part wanted to be the woman in Brant’s shirt, waiting for the water to boil, waiting for him to come home. A part of her thought about playing house for a while.
For a while.
“Don’t go back,” he’d said. “Ever.”
He’d been referring to spiders, but had meant a lot more. She’d spent years of her life in the jungle. She’d beaten back the brush to build a clinic. She’d fought generational distrust of western medicine, gotten thick-headed, stubborn, wonderful people to come to her with their medical problems. She was proud and possessive and loyal to the world she’d created.
Don’t go back. Ever.
Mel started when the water boiled over onto the stove. She reached over and turned the burner down, somehow vaguely surprised that she wasn’t wearing his shirt and nothing else.
It would be an easy life to slip into. It would be so…
What? Wonderful? Fulfilling? Natural? Yes. All that. So was being a doctor on the edge of civilization. So was building a clinic, saving lives.
Don’t go back. It echoed in her head. Don’t go back.
“Dr. Mel?” a groggy voice called out.
“I’m in the kitchen, Maria!”
There was a long moment of silence. Then, from a greater distance away, “Where’s the kitchen, Dr. Mel? I can’t find it.”
“Look for the dining room. Keep listening to the sound of my voice; just follow where you think the voice is. I’ll keep talking till you…get here.”
“Dr. Mel?” Maria asked, peering at her intently as she came into the room. “Is everything all right?”
“Yeah,” she said quickly. “I mean, yes. Listen, Maria, I know we talked about things to do and see here in L.A., and I want you to be able to do them, but I was talking with Brant, I mean Dr. Layton—”
“It’s okay, Dr. Mel; I know his name’s Brant. I call him that, just like I call you Dr. Mel.”
“Right. I always forget. I spoke to him and we think it would be better if we got you into the hospital a little early.”
“Is there something wrong?” Maria held a hand up to her bandages.
“No!” Mel hesitated. “Not with you. Maria, listen. You know Doctors International? They financed the clinic.”
“Sí. I have heard you speak of them. I had to look up some of the words you used to describe them, but I think I understand most of them.”
“Right.” Mel cleared her throat. “Well, they’re my boss, and they did a lot to get you here. Brant paid for your ticket and your procedure but DI made it possible for you to get your visa, and cleared the way for me to be your escort and—”
Mel’s phone rang. The caller ID said UNAVAILABLE. That was a lot of help. Kenneth came up with a number at least, and he was the only one she didn’t want to talk to. “Hello?”
“Hello?” a tiny female voice said from the end of a long metal tube. “I have a collect call to Maria from her mother. Will you accept the charges?”
Mel stared at the phone for a moment. The phone belonged to DI; it would appear on their bill. They wouldn’t get the bill until Maria was back home. “Of course.” She handed it to the girl. “Maria, your mother is calling; she must’ve gone to the clinic to talk to you. Take for as long as you like—the call is free. Tell her I said ‘hello.’”
“Mama!” Maria shouted eagerly into the phone and ran off in the general direction of the living room, tripping over her tongue as she chatted happily with her mother.
“SHIT!” Mel flung open the oven and a great cloud of black smoke bellowed out. That kicked off the smoke detector. She was about a foot too short to reach it so she grabbed a chair, slid it over and climbed on it, spilling the water and strewing the hot dogs over the floor.
“I’m home!” Brant called from somewhere in the house.
Of course, he’d have to walk in at that very moment. Could she never get anything right? Even with the chair Mel was too short to reach the alarm, which persisted in alerting the world that dinner was burned. As if everyone in the neighborhood hadn’t figured it out yet.
Brant came in as she was waving a broom at the alarm while balancing on the chair, desperate to hit the button that would make it stop squealing and do that funny little chirrup thing that it was supposed to. So far, she’d managed to break the light figure and smash her thumb. The alarm was still screaming.
Charcoal in the oven. Hot dogs and water and broken glass on the floor. Mel in tears. He took it in with a sort of stunned look on his face. Poleaxed. He finally had an image of what poleaxed looked like.
“What happened?”
“I thought I was in 9½ Weeks,” Mel said, not looking at him. “But I ended up being Lucille Ball.”
If Brant was trying not to smile, it wasn’t working. The corner of his mouth twitched ever so slightly as he reached his arms up, plucking her off the chair as if she weighed nothing at all. She slid down his arms until she was standing on the floor again, in his embrace. They both ignored the hot dog that squished under her shoe. It would have been a mood-killer anyway.
“Lucy was sexy as hell,” he whispered, and kissed her. “Besides, I stopped for Chinese on the way home.”
Yeah. Mel thought. Love.
Chapter 10
Brant’s hand on her back felt reassuring, but it was too brief a touch. She tried to read less into it than there probably was. It felt somehow different, though she couldn’t explain why.
Thankfully, Maria was too caught up chatting with her mother to notice if anything was off or different. Maria ended up talking so fast that Mel’s working knowledge of Spanish couldn’t keep up. Brant, who spoke only the few key phrases that most people in L.A. learn in order to survive, admitted he wasn’t even trying to catch his customary every fifth word.
However the call had gone, Maria seemed to be happier and calmer after speaking with her mother. It was a bright and happy child who sat down to stare skeptically at the strange food on her plate as they sat down to eat on the couch, the TV playing in the background with the sound off.
“Didn’t we already have dinner?” she tried.
“Some. But then you said you were hungry so we tried making hotdogs.” Mel grimaced at the kitchen mess that still needed to be cleaned. At least nothing had caught on fire. “Dr. Layton brought this. It’s really good.”
“I’m not really hungry.” Maria’s stomach growled, and they all burst out laughing.
“Give it a try,” Brant encouraged. “You might actually like it.”
The Orange Chicken was a success. The General Tso’s didn’t make the final cut, though. Brant swapped her an egg roll for the chicken.
“How do you feel about going to the hospital tomorrow?” Brant asked.
Mel blinked in surprise. She had thought to slowly bring up the topic and not scare Maria. Brant clearly figured the ice bucket to
the face was the better way. She opened her mouth, ready to protest, but Maria answered before Mel had a chance.
“Mama asked me to ask you about it,” Maria admitted, her mouth full of egg roll. “Some men came to her at Auntie Sofia’s house and wanted to…inter…uh…talk to her for papers.”
“Interview?” The food Mel had already consumed turned to lead in her stomach. She shoved her plate away, suddenly not hungry anymore.
“Sí. They wanted to ask about…about my father and where he was and how the fire…” The joy from speaking to her mother didn’t vanish, but retreated into the background behind the girl’s eyes. “They found out that Papa started the fire.” Maria looked up, her eyes above the bandage wide with shock. She swallowed hard and stared at her hands, fingers clenched into small fists; Mel’s heart broke and made her want to break Kenneth’s head.
But Maria didn’t give herself room for sadness long. When her head came up, her eyes flashed fire. “It was an accident!” she insisted, ignoring the angry tears that ran down her one good cheek. “He wouldn’t ever do anything like that, except he was…” She threw her hands up, obviously at a loss for words.
“Drunk,” Mel finished quietly.
“Sí,” Maria whispered to her plate.
“Maria.” Brant laid his hand on her arm. “No one here thinks your father started the fire deliberately.”
“Delib…?” Maria looked into Brant’s eyes, lost again. The need for approval, for support, was palpable, and if Mel’s heart had broken earlier, here the pieces of it shattered.
How did you explain these things to a child who had been hurt this badly?
“It means that we know he didn’t want to do it, that it was an accident.” Perhaps the explanation was simplistic, but Maria seized upon it.
“Sí!” Maria nodded, and stole a glance at Mel before looking back at Brant. “It was an accident.”
“So, don’t you worry about what some idiot says, okay?”
And when Brant looked into Maria’s eyes, all those little shattered pieces of Mel’s heart came together again—in a shining, beautiful whole. This is what Brant would look like as a father, and it was a beautiful thing.
This is the man I love. Mel felt an odd thickness in her throat. I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to cry.
But it was wonderful and scary, and a brand-new world was opening in that moment to Mel. For the first time she dared to look beyond today, and asked herself what the future could possibly look like.
What it might look like to stay.
Then Brant was talking and Mel realized, tin all his murmured reassurances to Maria, that he had come around to discussing tomorrow, and what would happen next. Maria’s eyes were shining, still wet with unshed tears, but her smile was tremulous and she held Brant’s hand like it was a lifeline.
“You’re in America, you’re with us, and you know that we like you and want you with us, so you just concentrate on that. We’ll get you lodged tomorrow morning and you’ll be safe there, okay?”
Maria managed a tentative smile and nodded, her cheek resting against his arm as she shifted on the couch and came to lean against him. “Sí, thank you. I think I would feel…safer…”
Brant shot Mel a look, something that spoke of equal parts pride and terror. Yet his hand was gentle as his arm came around her in a brief hug. “I already made arrangements,” Brant said, and paused so that he could raise her chin to look in her eyes. “I’m not going to lie to you, or hide things from you. After I talked to Mel, I called and set up a private room for you. I promise you, it’s all going to be all right.”
“Gracias.” And with that the sad eyes regained their light. She sat up again, with the awkwardness of a young lady who’d realized that she’d been acting childishly and needed to show she was adult enough to handle the tough stuff. But there was a certain gratitude in the look she gave him, and maybe a hint of hero worship.
A little girl, on the cusp of being a woman.
Who was still child enough to dive back into her food with all the fear and trepidation firmly handed off to the adults. Mel took a moment to envy the absolute trust that only a child can model.
Yet, could I have trusted a stranger like that so thoroughly when I was that age? Mel considered her twelve-almost-thirteen-year-old self, but all that came were memories of a childhood that was so normal as to be forgettable. Could that girl have done half so well as Maria did now?
It was late by the time Maria went up to her room. Her nap after dinner seemed to have energized her. Her questions about life in America were endless, yet Brant never once became impatient with the girl, and answered every question as though it were the most important thing in the world to do so.
Yet there were lines of tension around his mouth and eyes. A stiffness to his movements as though he were holding himself against some blow to come. He was worried, despite all his reassurances on the phone that everything was going to be just fine.
And she didn’t know how to help him.
Thankfully, Maria fell asleep quickly. It’d been an incredibly long day. Tomorrow would be as well. The girl needed her rest.
And suddenly, the house was theirs.
Mel leaned against Maria’s bedroom door, so tired it was a miracle she was still on her feet. How many miles had she come today? How many stressful phone conversations and real-life conversations had taken place? Wasn’t this supposed to be her love story? If so, she was decidedly lacking in time spent with the hero. If this were a book, the readers would be getting restless.
Maybe she was the one who was getting restless.
She’d missed him. Well, of course she’d missed him. They’d been apart for the last six months. But more than that, she really missed him. Today. When they’d had those delicious moments this afternoon before dinner…she’d relearned him. Which made it all that much harder to lose him again when he’d had to disappear to the office.
She’d never expected that letting-go process to be so sharp…
But then, she’d hardly been sated, had she? You didn’t catch up from a six-month absence in a single afternoon.
With that in mind, it was time to track down her man.
She found him in the kitchen, washing up the last few dishes. He’d managed to clean the rest of the kitchen in record time. Mel snuck up behind him and grabbed a towel.
“Good timing. I’m just finished,” Brant pointed out as he let the water out of the sink.
“I would’ve been here sooner,” Mel admitted as she began drying a glass, “but I needed a compass, two guide dogs, and a GPS update to find the kitchen again.”
Brant laughed. “It’s not that bad,” he protested then grimaced. “Okay, yeah, it’s a little confusing.” He turned and leaned against the counter as she continued to dry the last dishes. “My folks had the place built to show off.”
“Show off? Show off what?”
“The whole Hollywood thing. People believe you’re a bigshot if you show them you are. My father had to be impressive. He was the head of a major studio. He once told me that if he didn’t ‘wow’ the people who worked for him, they’d catch on that he didn’t know what he was doing.”
Mel mulled this over. “You grew up in this house, didn’t you?”
Brant nodded. “My mother wanted to get rid of it when Dad died, said it was too big for ‘one old woman to rattle around in.’” Brant laughed. “I didn’t want to give it up so it’s mine now, and she has her apartments in Paris.” He shrugged.
“I love how you can just roll that off your tongue.” Mel shook her head. “‘Mother’s apartments in Paris.’” She set down the last dish on the counter and wiped her hands. “Says the man with dish-pan hands and water all over the back of his pants.”
Brant, leaning against the counter, jumped up and felt around to his butt. “Damn. I guess the marble was wet.”
Mel laughed. “I guess.” She twirled the towel in her fingers, and glanced coyly over her shoulder at him as she
wiped down the counter. “So…I’m willing to bet that you can get powerfully loud on one end of the house and no one can hear you on the other end.”
Brant’s eyes darkened. “I slept through all the parties,” he said, taking a step toward her, and began nuzzling her neck. “Never heard so much as a drumbeat.”
Ooooh…that feels nice. Distractingly nice. Mel turned so she was facing him. Intimately. She kissed him lightly, a tease on the lips, and stepped back, instantly no longer tired. “I think…” Mel said, taking a single step away, toward the door. “I remember the path to your room.”
“Don’t you mean that door?” Brant half-turned, pointing in the opposite direction.
The towel in her hand sang out, laying a wet, stinging kiss on his already-soaked pants.
“OW!”
Mel got while the getting was good. His yelp lent wings to her feet. In an instant she was gone, the swinging door of the kitchen still flapping with the wind of her flight.
He bolted after her. She heard him careening down the long hallway behind her. She slammed through his bedroom door, and quickly shut it behind her. He must have put on an extra burst of speed, as he caught the door at the last second, keeping it from closing.
She was so in trouble.
Laughing, she threw her weight against the door, managing to somehow slam it so that it caught. She bolted across the room, leaving it empty behind her. Holing up in the bathroom, she was thinking she should’ve thought this through better before she attacked him with the towel.
I regret nothing.
The door to the bedroom opened.
Maybe.
Mel held her breath.
“OLLY-OLLY-OXEN-FREE!”
“Really?!” Mel collapsed against the bathroom door, giggling. “How old are you?”
“About sixteen right now.” He chuckled, and she felt his laughter through the door. “But, for the record, you snapped a towel me like a ten-year-old.” He paused, possibly rubbing his derrière. “And very effectively at that, I might add!”
There was a long silence.
“Are you going to let me in?”
